


blue bayou

by winchesterstupid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bad Parent John Winchester, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Castiel Whump (Supernatural), Castiel and Dean Winchester Have a Profound Bond, Castiel is Not Okay (Supernatural), Childhood Trauma, Dean Winchester Has Internalized Homophobia, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Emotionally Hurt Dean Winchester, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Louisiana Voodoo vibe, M/M, Monster of the Week, Overprotective Dean Winchester, Post-Gadreel (Supernatural), Post-Purgatory (Supernatural), Pre-Canon, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Sam Winchester Has PTSD, Sam Winchester Needs a Nap, Sam Winchester Whump, Scooby Doo References, Team Free Will (Supernatural), Witches, Young Dean Winchester, Young Sam Winchester, the first tag is the most important
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:55:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25616980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchesterstupid/pseuds/winchesterstupid
Summary: Houssaye is a little Louisiana town where the only thing thicker than the swamp is the air. With a house for rent and a monster on the loose, the boys take a much-needed vacation for what should be a simple job. In Sam's lifetimes of experience, though, nothing is ever simple.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Original Male Character(s), Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 12
Kudos: 27





	1. the worried mind

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this all in 1AM portions so if it seems feverish, disorganized, or unbalanced, that's because it is.  
> The timeline is super vague, could fit in anywhere post s9. I just wanted to stick the boys on a case.

He thought it’d be one of those permanent additions to his nightmare reel of biggest losses, but Sam barely remembers the last time they were here. It feels like a lifetime ago. It might have even been several deaths ago, anyway—he finds it hard to keep track, now, after all of them. There have been so many.  
  
Louisiana is verdant humidity, friendly small towns, and thick accents. So the same, mostly. Sam, though, a walking pair of eyebags and scruff overgrown to the verge of itching, is nowhere near the same. More importantly, he thinks, Dean is not the same. As an added bonus (or detractor, depending on who you ask), Castiel isn’t the same, either. They, collectively, definitively, are not the same as they were after everything. After Amelia—after Purgatory—after their year apart. Whether that’s good or bad also depends on who you ask.  
  
Dean likes to say they’ve grown better with age, and Sam can’t tell if he’s joking or if he really believes that, that all this time has allowed them all a little leniency in considering their mistakes. It’s not terrible logic, really. Sam would love to be optimistic about the state of their eternal souls. Hell, he’s actively attempting optimism, albeit with the kind of cold clinical detachment that Dean hates. Point by point, Sam can mentally run through the list of qualities in favor of their moral growth, like each one is a stitch in some kind of emotional gut-wound that keeps him on the verge of draining out completely:  
  
1\. They’re willing to let old grudges die, for the most part.  
  
2\. None of them are under mind control, probably, for the time being.  
  
3\. They’ve given up chasing fantasies, and they don’t blame each other for what they’ve had to let go.  
  
4\. The distance between Louisiana and Kermit, Texas, is just another stretch of road. Purgatory is a bad memory. Heaven doesn’t care about Cas anymore. They owe nothing to nobody.  
  
For once, there is nothing—no imminent interdimensional universe-threatening _thing_ —breathing down their necks. They can just do their job. Right now, right here, in Houssaye, Louisiana, that means calculating the possibility that this B&B owner is a fang.  
  
So Sam is lurking in the aisles of a convenience store like a total weirdo while Dean and Cas check out (read: break into) the most recent victims’ rented vacation house. He’s there for twenty minutes, really getting to know this small room with the broken air conditioner, before he catches sight of their primary suspect shambling into the store at exactly the time the clerk said he would. Exactly, as in down to the minute. According to the teenage clerk, the guy likes routine.  
  
Sam waits until the suspect approaches the counter with a bag of chips (exactly the brand the clerk said he would buy, because guy really likes routine) and then he sidles up behind him as casually as possible. Sam’s cover is a bottle of FRESH-TASTING! LOCALLY-SOURCED! PURIFIED MNEMO SPRINGS WATER. He drinks from it as he waits, and in a hyperbolic sense, it’s just about the sweetest thing he’s ever had.  
  
It’s a hot day in Louisiana.  
  
He’s sweating through his fucking suit.  
  
The young clerk earns her petty bribe by completely ignoring Sam’s presence until after she’s checked out the suspect. “Have a good afternoon, Mr. Kirk,” she calls after him, discreetly arching an eyebrow at Sam as Mr. Kirk shambles out the door. She nods to confirm that Mr. Kirk is, indeed, the guy Sam has been looking for. “Afternoon, officer,” she says meaningfully.  
  
“Yeah, afternoon.” He doesn’t like the way she eyes him.  
  
Water clutched in one hand and badge ready in the other, Sam hurries after the suspect. He tries not to come on like a Jehovah’s Witness.  
  
Boyd Kirk is a short middle-aged man with the soft belly of a functional alcoholic. He wears a dark short sleeve button-down, open to showcase a faded Harley Davidson t-shirt. Atop a mop of unbrushed hair sits a trucker’s cap so faded it looks pink, with holes rivaling the size of those in Bobby’s oldest hat. His irises are a complicated honey underneath half-closed eyelids. With the round cheeks and zen expression, he looks like a bearded Buddha.  
  
It all matches his mugshot, anyway.  
  
Sam catches up to him in the parking lot and flashes his badge. “Boyd Kirk? I’m Agent Orbison.”  
  
“Yessir?” says Boyd Kirk, swinging around in a lax about-face. Usually from an ex-con who is possibly a monster, Sam expects more resistance to authority. Boyd here is placid; amiable, even. Sam doesn’t let it ruffle him. He's an expert at poker-face.  
  
“I’m here about the house you’re renting out,” he continues, pocketing his badge. Kirk sleepily follows the action with his eyes. “The one with the, uh, deceased lodgers.”  
  
“Yeah? Police musta contacted you.”  
  
“Yes, we were notified,” Sam lies easily. He can lie easily as long as he knows it’s for the greater good. “The sheriff was concerned that the local force might not have the resources to handle it.”  
  
Kirk shuffles, looks at his scuffed boots with the scrappy laces and steel toes. “So it’s real serious, then.” He scratches his beard and makes a low noise in his throat.  
  
“Yes, sir, it is,” Sam says. He’s sweating madly under his collar. April in Louisiana is barely better than July in Louisiana. Was it July, when they were here last? That seems wrong. He doesn’t remember sweating this much.  
  
“Shame.” Kirk shakes his head. “They was good kids. It’s a damn shame.”  
  
Sam thinks about Dean pitching his hypothesis—an ex-con short on dough turns into a landlord, landlord turns into a vamp, vamplord turns on tenants; a convenient buffet right in his wallet. No way is it a nest or a long-term solo gig, Dean says, guy’s been here too long with only one black mark on his record and these are the only monster kills in the county for two decades. So, Dean says, ergo, Dean says, if it’s a turn, it’s gotta be a recent turn, which explains the amateur move of Boyd (hypothetically) killing his own customers.  
  
Vampires in Louisiana, again; the big ifs, again. Ever since his trip west of Hell, Dean’s been keen on giving monsters the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it’s mature of him. Black-and-white perspectives never really worked out for anybody.  
  
Sam thinks about Boyd Kirk and the way he pulls at his beard and how he stands with his shoulders too hunched for a man his size. The nature of this man, standing in broad daylight and wringing his hands, doesn’t send off the usual warning signs.  
  
“I read up on you,” Sam says off-handedly. “You’ve run into trouble with the law before.”  
  
“Yessir,” Kirk replies, bobs his head, shamelessly and without antagonism. “But I did my time. I’m reformed.”  
  
“Reformed?” Sam allows himself to sound skeptical, to confirm the null. “From murder?”  
  
“Yessir.” Kirk smiles like he knows something Sam doesn’t. That action is vaguely monstrous, but it doesn’t look monstrous, and Sam is finding it harder and harder to believe a vampire this sadistic would spend this long talking to a federal agent wearing a suit this cheap.  
  
In his pocket, next to the spare dead man’s blood bullets, Sam’s phone buzzes. Once. Twice. Three times in a row. Sam nods, more to himself than the other man. He allows himself to smile back. “Okay, Mr. Kirk.”  
  
“You can call me Boyd, sir.”  
  
“Okay. Boyd. Mind taking me to the house and showing me around? I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

No signs of a nest, is what three texts means. No signs of Boyd being a rogue, either. No vamp signs at all, in fact, Dean says in the fourth text. For all intents and purposes, Boyd’s Bayou Airbnb is just a run-of-the-mill rented swampside cabin run by a human ex-con. Reconsidering the files, the photographs of the two vacationing couples and one lone tourist found ripped apart, it makes sense that this is something other than a vampire. A particularly violent revenant, maybe. A powerful ghost or spectre. A sloppy werewolf. Something new, even.  
  
Boyd drives him to the house. In the beginning they talk about the weather and politics, and somehow Sam isn’t surprised to find out Boyd is a live-and-let-live Libertarian. He lives across town and works part-time at a Cajun restaurant, no wife or kids or family nearby. His ride is a dented cream-colored Ford pickup that suddenly sparks into twangy banjo music halfway through the trip, which breaks the awkward silence they lapse into after running out of small-talk.  
  
Sam’s thoughts get snagged in the sun’s red reflection in the passenger mirror. It’s nearing dusk, and that alone puts him on a higher level of alertness. Nothing cosmic breathing down their necks, sure, but there’s always something looming behind them. Monsters, dead friends, bad knees, a hundred other things that build up and build up and don’t get resolved until the whole dam breaks. It’s anxiety and guilt and wallowing until then, and that’s what they call the bad times or the rough patches. It’s Sam’s turn for the beatdown right now. He’ll get better. It’ll take longer than it used to, but he’ll get better, he knows it. It isn’t worth it to wallow.  
  
The thing is, Sam knows he shouldn’t wallow. He’s a professional, a seasoned professional, and he should know better. He should do better, but sometimes it’s hard not to wallow. Sometimes he forgets that the prick of a devil isn’t after him, or Ruby with her black eyes and open arms, or the crack-under-me pressure of the Apocalypse or Hell Trials, or something hidden inside him waiting to snap the neck of a friend. That stuff is all there, is always there, and he knows he’s grown from every mistake, but sometimes he gets snagged on it. Sometimes it’s like he’s back in all those bad times again, all at once. Sam has to remind himself it’ll always be there, it’s not going anywhere, so he can deal with it later. He buries the hatchets, he forgets Jess and John and Lucifer and Amelia and Gadreel and Eileen and the other dozen names knocking around his skull, and he pushes through. It’ll take him a while, but he always pushes through, or down, anyway. The dam will break eventually, he knows it has to break with all this stuff he’s been letting build up, but it can break at a later date. He does what he has to and he gets the job done and everything else comes after.  
  
Sam finishes his bottle of water, mouth tasting inexplicably like pennies, the static electric of a storm, something just north-north-west of refreshing. Refreshment, too, comes at a later date.  
  
The house, perched a few feet from an actual swamp, is a horrendous lime green, but it’s surprisingly well-kept given the state of Boyd’s clothes and truck. He puts a lot of care into this one thing, out of everything. “Here she is,” he says gruffly. Sam pries himself from the truck and pretends his legs haven’t fallen asleep. He shouldn’t think about sleep—hasn’t slept much more than a grand total of nine hours this week. If he thinks about it, he might keel over on the spot. If he thinks about it, he might panic when he realizes his conversation skills have fallen to crap.  
  
“Nice place,” he comments instead of thinking about it. He follows Boyd’s large stride to the front door. There’s a few steps he almost stumbles on, but he’s still awake enough to catch himself. Sam finds himself, purely subconsciously, leaning into his own hand-me-down Kansan accent. “How’d you get into this line of work?”  
  
“When I got out the slammer, I didn’t have much else to do. Had this fixer-upper left to me by my pap, an’ I fixed her up, an’ figured I could do with the extra cash.” Boyd affectionately pats one of the columns of the porch. “Pap was a carpenter, an’ I didn’t inherit much of his gift, but I built some of the furnishing. Porch swing over there. Dining room table.” He unlocks the door and the dining room is to the right, and the dining room table is large and beautiful. Crafted by the hands of a murderer, Sam reminds himself, and nearly lapses into a philosophical meandering about the duality of man. Nine hours of sleep can do that to a Stanford dropout.  
  
“Really nice,” he says, instead, lamely. He’s too tired for this. He regrets telling Dean he could handle this. He wishes he had asked for a week off just so he could sleep. He knows, realistically, that this scenario could never actually happen—his guilty martyr complex wouldn’t allow it—but reality seems to be slipping further and further from his grasp, so he wishes away. He daydreams of an alternate universe in which an alternate Sam told alternate Dean and Cas to alternatively piss off, because lore jockeys need sleep, too.  
  
“Agent?”  
  
Boyd peers at him like he’s waiting for something, and Sam realizes he’s spaced out. He clears his throat like that’ll make up for anything. “Excuse me. Can you, um, repeat that?”  
  
“Long night?” Boyd says sympathetically. He tilts his head and it’s familiar. Cas-like, maybe, angelic, or proximately so, and Sam really has crossed his name off the suspect list for good. The other two thirds of Team Free Will won’t like that bump in the road, but his instincts say this man is clean. And Sam should know clean when he sees it, shouldn’t he, having been so unclean?  
  
“Uh, yeah. You could say that.” Sam rubs his eyes and tries not to wallow in the memory of the dragging evening before. First of all, the eleven hour drive. The heaps of research on everything that could be haunting a bayou. Sam insisting that Dean ask for directions because they were hopelessly lost in the depths of some swamp-city, and Dean’s bittersweet smile upon hearing the local accent; him turning to Cas, half-asleep in the backseat, saying _remind you of anyone?_ The hatches briefly unburying themselves as the Pelican State unfurled around them, and the old ache of guilt and loss and blame settling on the nape of Sam’s neck. It was all so familiar, and all so alien. He’d wondered if that’s what Castiel felt when he saw something for the first time—a person, like Claire, maybe, or something as mundane as an ad on TV—something or someone that his vessel had seen a thousand times before. Something old, but new. Different.  
  
Yeah, alien is the right word. Sam feels, has always felt, like a green-blooded freak.  
  
Sam is trying not to wallow, trying not to get snagged, trying not to think about sleeping, but he’s worried. Maybe he's changed, or maybe he's just tired.  
  
“Agent,” Boyd says, and now he sounds vaguely concerned. “Questions?”  
  
“Right,” Sam breathes. He has a script to be sticking to. “How long were they in state?”  
  
“Just two days. Was supposed to be a week, get the most they could out of the local attractions, but.” Boyd shrugs. But it got cut short.  
  
“You’d never met them before?”  
  
“No. They arranged it over the phone. All I did was show up to greet ‘em. They was nice. Outdoor nuts, kinda. They said they was gonna go kayaking.”  
  
“They report anything strange?” Sam hesitates. Sometimes the next part can put a monster on red-alert. He’s pretty sure Boyd isn’t one, but pretty sure isn’t certain. Still. He has to go on. “Strange sounds or smells? Um, flickering lights or cold spots in the house? Intruders on the property?”  
  
“Well,” Boyd says thoughtfully, not moved one inch by the _X-Files_ line of questioning. “No smells. But the family just before ‘em said they thought they saw somebody in the window wearin’ some kinda mask. They were leavin’ the next morning, anyway, so they didn’t worry much, but they let me know. They was pretty scared. I figured it was just some kid pullin’ a joke.”  
  
That’s something. Sam tries not to sound so eager when he asks, “What kind of mask?”  
  
“Uh, said it was some sort of canine. Toothy son of a gun, you know, like professional Halloweenie gear. Good quality, I guess, enough to make their kid throw a fit when he caught an eyeful.”  
  
Canine. Werewolf, maybe, but the lunar cycle and the lack of missing hearts or violent cattle deaths in this area don’t indicate a pack or even a recent turn like they’d suspected—a loner pureblood, some kind of Traveling Wilbury, then? It’s unusual. Whatever it is, Sam’s glad they’re stocked with silver. “Thank you, Boyd, that’s very helpful. I just have one last question.”  
  
“Anything, boss.”  
  
“Are you still renting?”

Boyd is still renting, yes, and he’s just had two new lodgers move in today, as a matter of fact. Nice gents. Tourism has been up lately, not that the locals are fans of outsiders. Small town locals never are, though.  
  
He gives Sam a ride back to town where he spends the rest of the day asking people if they’ve seen the couple of vics. The story is yes, they were just passing through, they seemed nice enough for tourists, they didn’t stay in town much. While he’s doing this, Dean and Cas are busy moving in. They’re posing as roadtrippers on some Kerouacian trek through the southern USA. Boyd didn’t question it much, Dean says via text, he just goes with the flow, but he did give them a heads up about the murders. Nice of him.  
  
The house isn’t too far from town. An hour before sunset, Sam walks there so he can have an actual mattress to sleep on. “About time,” is all Dean says when Sam (sweating an irrational amount) shows up at the door, and then he returns to his argument with Cas about why the overcoat isn’t appropriate gear for ninety degree weather. " _Because,_ Cas. It's fine in Vermont, but you'll look like a fuckin' creep in Louisiana."  
  
The house is their base, and they are possibly the bait. Every window and doorway is lined with salt and goofer dust; every wall is painted with warding or Eileen’s binding sigils; the fridge is loaded with jars of dead man’s blood, and their guns all have silver bullets. They’ve decided the house is close enough to the monster’s hunting grounds that it’ll return once it gets wind of fresh meat, which Dean says justifies the angel graffiti all over Boyd’s nest egg. By ten o’clock they’re ready. Sam feels prepared enough for a fourth (fifth?) apocalypse. He’s even considering allowing himself a half hour catnap, but then Dean asks, “What’s our game plan?” and Sam almost loses it right there.  
  
He stops where he is, halfway between the kitchen with the ugly floral wallpaper and the living room that has the couch with the bowed spine. “I thought you had a game plan.”  
  
Dean rolls his eyes, scratches his belly, sips his beer with the slow indulgence that his arrogance affords him. “My game plan depended on the bad guy being the obviously evil landlord, but you said he was clean.”  
  
“He is.”  
  
Dean pulls a face. “No offense, Sammy, but in—”  
  
“Dean, I swear, if the next words out of your mouth are Scooby Doo,” Sam threatens emptily. Dean mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like _In Scooby Doo, the landlord is always the villain._ To keep the peace, Sam ignores him. He swipes a hand over his face—he really should shave, Dean keeps bugging him about it and it definitely does not suit the climate—determined to keep the heaviness of his eyelids at bay for a while longer. “Alright, I guess we have to reassess.”  
  
“We’ll come up with something, Sam. You should get some rest.” Cas sits at the table, struggling with the lid of a frozen lasagna they picked up at a convenience store. There’s several jagged holes in it, which Sam assumes are from the butterknife lying next to him, but he can’t seem to figure out how to remove the plastic. Dean shrugs at him, lips quirking in a smile.  
  
Sam clears his throat and tries to mimic that affectionate expression. “I’m good, Cas. Maybe we’re missing something obvious. We should look over the reports again. Are we sure there isn’t anybody who lives nearby in some sort of, I dunno, hermit shack? Werewolves aren’t exactly sociable.”  
  
“Good idea, Sammy, but Cas is right. Get your ass to bed.” Despite his demanding tone and the clear order, Dean’s expression is nothing but concern, and it makes Sam wonder if exhaustion is that plain on his own face. He brushes his humidity-rumpled hair behind his ears and approximates an aura of health.  
  
“I will, guys, I just...I got the sense that most locals around here don’t like tourists, and it seems like the monster doesn’t either. He’s only preyed on tourists so far.”  
  
Dean’s jaw drops. “No way. So this really is _Scooby Doo?”_  
  
It takes Sam a second to process that. “What?”  
  
Cas, whipped as he is, nods in agreement. “In _Scooby Doo,_ a large proportion of the villains are territorial locals.”  
  
Dean plops into the chair beside him and snatches the lasagna out of Castiel’s hands to open it for him. He winces as the grease-splatter burns him, but shakes his head as Cas moves to heal him. “Our game plan is to find the biggest—Sam, go to sleep, seriously, I’m exhausted just looking at you—to find the biggest dillhole in town.”  
  
“That’s what Scooby and the gang would do,” Cas says gravely, and Dean smiles like he’s proud of the fact he converted a perfectly good angel of the Lord into a television junkie. So begins a conversation about _Scooby Doo_ that seems to be entirely for Sam’s benefit, and definitely pivots to actual important things that Sam could help with only after he gives up and retires to the living room. They're probably right, though. He should rest. He lowers himself into the blessed softness of the couch, and turns his face against the worn and holey back cushion, and sighs, and lets his mind drift away from thoughts of hunting. Dean is right. He has to rest.  
  
He will allow himself an hour. To rest.


	2. the saving of dimes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things begin to spiral out of control. Sam reminisces about an old friend. He should have taken a longer nap.

Sam gets four hours instead of one. He feels vaguely rested, but more irate than anything. Dean and Cas did come up with a plan while he slept so they’re all in town the next day to size up the most belligerent of the townsfolk. Sam, already knowing their answer, asks if they’re ready to ham up the tourist persona to lure out the monster of the week.  
  
“I’ll have everybody in this town hating me in an hour,” Dean promises.  
  
“Yeah, but do it on purpose this time, Dean,” Sam advises, and barely dodges a swat.  
  
Sam is caffeinating when he sees the poster. Focused so much on the relief of his iced tea, he almost walks right by it, but the slogan catches his eye. Old-but-new-and-also-different, it screams. It’s a garishly bright and corny advert for Houssaye Ghost Tours. _Do you believe in life after death?_ the slogan asks.  
  
“You will soon,” Sam reads aloud, brow wrinkling. He’s about to reach for the poster when, abruptly, Boyd Kirk appears on the sidewalk with Dean and Cas in tow. “Agent,” he greets. His voice is just pleasantly surprised. Sam hates method-acting monsters. Sometimes he gets attached to their false persona and then regrets it when he has to kill them. Despite himself, he likes Boyd. He hopes Boyd isn’t actually Vicious Werewolf Boyd.  
  
“Fancy seeing you here,” Sam replies conversationally. “How are you?”  
  
Boyd shrugs. “‘Bout as well as expected. Kinda ironic, but I ain’t so good with death.”  
  
“Ironically, neither am I,” Sam says sheepishly. He doesn’t miss the little quirk in Dean’s brow, but he’s not going to mention it, either. “One day at a time, right?”  
  
“I guess.” Boyd scratches his beard. Behind him, Dean and Cas exchange a look.  
  
“Boyd, are you going to introduce us?” Castiel rumbles, nothing if not dedicated to his role. When he thinks Boyd isn’t watching, he throws something resembling a wink at Sam. Maybe it’s supposed to be encouraging.  
  
“Right,” Boyd says. “Agent Orbison, these are the fellas who’re renting the house, Dean Henley and Clarence Ronstadt.”  
  
Sam had asked to listen to “Blue Bayou” once— _once_ —and Dean had obliged, and obliged again, and then built their entire aliases off it. _Don Henley did backups on Linda’s cover,_ Dean had said.  
  
_I like her,_ Castiel had said. _So gifted. Elegant. Orbison, too, don’t you think?_  
  
And Sam couldn’t say _Over the span of two hours we’ve listened to every cover and live variation of this, I just wanted to hear Roy Orbison once,_ or _would you please make it stop,_ or _I never should’ve bought Cas that_ fucking _iPod,_ because he was sitting shotgun, and the smartass in the driver’s seat would just turn the volume up.  
  
Sam shakes their hands. “Nice to meet you,” Castiel says politely.  
  
“Agent,” drawls the smartass. “What an honor.”  
  
Boyd doesn’t bat an eye. “I warned ‘em about what happened to the last folks who stayed here, but they say they come prepared.”  
  
“Oh, yeah. We’re no strangers to trouble. Some homicidal swamp freak don’t scare us. We’re just waitin’ for someone to make our day, ain’t that right, Clarence?” Dean pats his new pistol holster—genuine engraved leather, genuine silver bullets. He’s beaming proud. He rarely gets to pack in the open like this, but Sam made the mistake of saying they should play up the outsider bit, so he’s gone full redneck and made himself a concealed carry license.  
  
“That’s right, Dean.” Castiel brusquely flicks aside the hem of his jacket, where he’s got a matching holster and a gun of his own. Sam’s smile is strained. They’re going a little over the top with the routine. They’re supposed to be naive tourists, not caricatures from _Dukes of Hazzard._  
  
“Well, that’s alright, but make sure you leave the work to the professionals,” Sam warns. Amiably, of course.  
  
“We’ll see,” Castiel replies ominously. Dean elbows him as he attempts a wink again. _Overkill,_ his glare says, and Sam can’t help but agree.  
  
“Of course, Agent,” Dean amends. “We’re not lookin’ to step on your toes. Named these sweet things Patience and Chastity for a reason. Last thing we need is more trouble with the law.”  
  
Boyd nods sleepily back into the conversation. “As long as you boys are in town, you might want to check out the new mysterio spot they just put in. ‘Posed to be pretty freaky.”  
  
Sam blanches. He can feel—he can physically _feel_ —himself go pale as a corpse, like all the blood is draining straight out of his body and into the earth under his feet. He knows why the goddamn poster is so familiar now. “The what?”  
  
“Ghost tours.” Boyd points to the poster. “Local family built it. Some wonder of the world type place, based off all those legends of swamp lights and bog monsters, I guess. It brung in a whole lotta cash too. Never seen this town so busy. It’s nifty, spite of what the old folks say.”  
  
“Yeah? What do the old folks say?”  
  
“Takin’ advantage of genuine bayou magic, they say, don’t like the commercialism. Never been inside, a’course, but I hear it lives up to the, what do you call it, the hype?”  
  
“The hype,” Dean agrees faintly, like he’s not sure if he should laugh or not. Boyd’s face is entirely sincere. “Sure.”  
  
“Well, I don’t know if I believe in ghosts, seein’ as if they did exist it wouldn’t mean anythin’ good for someone like me—" Castiel nods, as if this is a reasonable thing for a murderer to casually throw into a conversation. Boyd waggles a finger at Dean and Cas. “But you fellas seem like the type to find it entertainin’, at least.”  
  
“Yeah, maybe we’ll get a laugh out of it,” Dean agrees. He keeps glancing at Sam, finally noticing that something is wrong.  
  
Something is very, very wrong.

Sam can’t find the stakes.  
  
They’re back at the house, and Sam is digging through every weapons bag and go-bag they have tucked away, and there is not a single piece of hickory in any one, and he already knows they don’t have any in the Impala’s trunk. They’re always supposed to be prepared for the damn Apocalypse. How do they not have any hickory?  
  
The door slams downstairs and Sam flinches into a defensive stance before he registers the familiar tread of Dean’s boots coming up the stairs to stop dead in the doorway. He’s a radiator throwing off alternating waves of exasperated amusement and concern, just watching as Sam rids a duffel bag of its contents and combs through. Silver. Lamb’s blood. A djinn kit. Not what he needs.  
  
“You realize he’s not actually a trickster, so stakes are useless?”  
  
“Yes,” Sam mutters, even though his brain managed to forget that crucial fact—blame it on adrenaline or sleep-deprivation or the godawful heat. There’s too much going on, and he’s pretty sure he’s also experiencing some ramped-up PTSD state. He kneels, blows a strand of hair out of his face. He’s breathing heavily even though he’s not done anything particularly exerting. _Shit._ Plan B? Does he have a Plan B?  
  
“Sammy,” Dean says cautiously, “I don’t think this place actually has anything to do with anything.”  
  
“Probably not,” Sam agrees. Plan B. He shoves everything back in the duffel, carelessly, and sidesteps Dean. “Where’s your angel blade?”  
  
Dean follows right on his tail, back down the stairs to where Cas is still unlacing his boots (Boyd’s no shoes in the house rule is probably smart, considering every inch of lawn is mud or muddy water). He’s right on his tail even as Sam charges onto the lawn, away from his incessant nagging. “First of all, a regular angel blade won’t work on an archangel. Secondly, Gabriel is dead, and he was kind of a good guy anyways, so killing him doesn’t make much sense, actually. Can you take a minute to think about this?"  
  
_No emotion,_ Sam tells himself. _Stay calm,_ he thinks. _Don’t make him doubt your judgment._ “Are you sure about that? I mean a hundred percent completely certain?” Sam wants to cringe at the bite in his voice and at the way the trunk whines when he pops it open, but it isn’t an unreasonable question. Gabriel has come back from the dead before. He’s screwed them over before and he's killed Dean before. Nevermind his multiple redemption arcs. Once a dick—  
  
Dean leans over his shoulder as he roots through the Impala’s trunk. In some bizarre role flip, he’s the one speaking evenly and logically, and it does nothing to soothe Sam’s growing paranoia (what if this has just been another hundred-Tuesdays-six-months-rogue trick? A long-long-con? It’s unthinkable but Sam can’t stop thinking it). “Look, all I’m saying is this is nothing more than a coincidence, right? There’s Mystery Spots all over this country. Most of ‘em are junk. What are the chances we catch two cases involving them?”  
  
“We don’t have coincidences in this line of work,” Sam says, and he’s calm and cool and collected, too. “You know that.”  
  
“Well,” Dean hesitates. Sam can use that. “At least slow down, man. You’re all wound up. Take a break.”  
  
“Don’t need a break, Dean, I need to kill this thing,” Sam mutters. He finds a spare angel blade (again forgetting how useless it is if his fears are right and this really is, somehow, Gabe fucking with him) and marches back into the house. Castiel, with his rumpled suit and absurdly mismatched socks (have they been that way for eleven years?) is now standing in the living room with the crumpled poster in hand as he awkwardly waits for the familial dispute to fizzle out. He mouths something at Dean as Sam passes by, like Sam can’t see him, but Dean just shakes his head and bats at Sam’s shoulder as he combs the kitchen cabinet for their spare jar of holy oil.  
  
“Sam, would you listen to yourself for a fucking second? What thing? We don’t even know if there’s a thing to kill yet!”  
  
“Yeah, still," Sam snaps, "I’m checking that place out right now." He's slamming cupboards admittedly more noisily than is necessary, but Dean hovering over him is driving him batshit. “I’m ending it.”  
  
His fury _(or is it fear?)_ fills the room with static for a long moment until Cas clears his throat.  
  
“I’ll go with you,” the angel offers.  
  
“Cas?” Dean asks, aghast. “Don’t encourage him.”  
  
“Ghost tours, Dean. Sam is right. It’s literally got our thing written all over it.” Cas waves the poster, squinting like he's daring Dean to contradict him.  
  
Dean reels through several emotions in the span of a second before he settles on disbelief. “Our th—okay, yes, ghost tours. I get it, we’ll check the fucking tour out, but we'll do it as a fucking team. Sam isn't in any state—”  
  
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” Sam snaps, again. But it is very _reasonable_ and _logical_ of him to snap, and he doesn’t deserve the wary looks they throw him, because _they_ didn’t live through half a year of Groundhog Hell. “Look, maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s nothing. But I’m checking it out and you’re both staying here. End of story.”  
  
“Sam, I don’t think that’s—” Cas tries.  
  
“Give me the keys.”  
  
“Sammy, just take a breath—“ Dean pleads.  
  
“Keys. Now.” Sam thrusts his free hand out. Right in this moment his speeding world and racing thoughts slow down, and he’s certain that he’s on the right course. He knows he looks crazy right now, wild-eyed and with one foot in the land of constant endless goddamn Tuesdays, but he knows in his bones that he has to do this. “I have a bad feeling about this, Dean. Like something bad will happen if you come with me. So there's not a chance I’m letting you,” Sam says, and he’s calm. “Not a chance I'm letting you die again, Dean.”  
  
Is he a bad person for emotionally manipulating his brother’s paternal instincts? If it saves Dean’s life, Sam doesn’t care.  
  
He stands his ground, hand outstretched for the keys. “Please just let me do this.”  
  
Dean looks sick with guilt, but still he backs away. “Sorry, man. Guess you’ll have to walk.”  
  
"I'll walk if I have to."  
  
"I know you will. And I'll follow you, but I'm not letting you go alone."  
  
Sam withdraws his hand, gathers his resolve. Of course Dean won't let him go alone. He's like John in that way. No trust in Sam's instincts, or his abilities, like he's still a helpless little kid. It's so _fucking frustrating._  
  
As long as he’s this far in the hole, Sam figures he might as well go a little further. He turns his attention to the angel that’s been standing stiffly behind his brother, keeping a wary watch on the both of them. “Cas,” he begins. "Cas, listen to me."  
  
Castiel’s face tightens with the dawning understanding of the horrible thing Sam's about to do, but he doesn't move to interrupt.  
  
“If you trust me, Castiel," Sam says firmly, "if you care about Dean, you won’t let him leave.”  
  
Well. Judging by the faces the two of them make, if Sam wasn’t already hellbound, he is now. The slump of Castiel’s shoulders show him just how damned they both are.  
  
Dean scoffs, shifts uncomfortably in his muddy boots on Boyd's clean floor. “Jesus, Sam, he’s not—”  
  
Sam ignores him, ignores how wrong this whole thing is and how much he’ll regret it when it’s over. He keeps his eyes trained on the angel’s sad gaze. “Do you trust me, Cas?”  
  
Castiel is sighing, eyes so twisted up with remorse that Sam is almost regretting it himself. “Yes."  
  
“Cas?” Dean asks, tone floating somewhere between uncertainty and betrayal and a place where his legs have been kicked out from under him. It’s easy for Castiel to reach out and take the car keys, just pry them from Dean's pliant hand. He tosses them to Sam with a most mournful expression.  
  
"How much time do you need?"  
  
Sam backs toward the door like he's holding the room at gunpoint. "Give me two hours. I’ll be back,” he promises. “I’m sorry. Just please stay here and keep him alive.”  
  
“Of course.” It’s such an automatic response that Sam almost feels bad for using it against them.  
  
Almost.  
  
If it keeps Dean alive—  
  
As long as he can save Dean, Sam will risk feeling bad. He'll risk just about anything.  
  
“Keep in touch,” Cas says morosely.  
  
Dean’s face creases with his opening-closing fists like he doesn’t know who to shout at first, because it’s day two and this has already spiraled so out of control. Life With No Script has turned out to be a fucking pain in the ass again.  
  
“Sam, just take a breath,” Dean orders. Begs.  
  
“I’ll be back,” Sam repeats, and shoves himself out the door so he can steal his brother’s car.


	3. the sun don't shine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a short one

Somewhat sheepishly, Sam heaves himself through the window. They were right--Ghost tours was a bust, and he had stayed there for five hours to make sure, and ended up traumatizing a teenager after mistaking him for Gabriel. He just feels tired and stupid, and Dean didn't make matters any better with the amount of smug GIFs he texted after Sam reported his failed stake-out.  
  
Sam enters through the window because apparently paranoia is not done with him yet. He’s not entirely sure—sleep-deprivation is a bitch—but he thinks someone is watching the front of the house. He heard footsteps of some kind on his way from where he parked the Impala, but whether they were made by man, animal, or monster is unclear. Whatever it is (or isn't), it's got Sam's hackles raised.  
  
The lights are off inside, so he draws his gun and keeps it handy as he clears the first floor. Cas should still be awake, at least. He usually reads by lamplight at night, but Sam can't see any light at all. He can hear nothing except the trilling swamp bugs and the generator's busy hum. It's hot as hell even with the air conditioning, and he hasn't changed clothes since morning so there's a thin sheen on his skin that the mosquitoes seem to enjoy. Regardless, he kind of prides himself on being thorough, so he checks every room without so much as a pause to wipe the sweat from his brow.  
  
The bedroom Dean picked out is empty and untouched, but there’s a dim yellow light shining under the kitchen door. Sam's not willing to take the chance that it’s just his brother up for a midnight snack--those kinds of assumptions have bitten them on the ass more than once. Even if they think they know the house is safe, they never _really_ know. (Paranoia again?) With that in mind, he creeps forward through the dining room, avoids the hand-crafted table, levels his gun at the door, and takes a quiet breath to brace himself.  
  
He knocks it open.  
  
“Christ!” Dean hisses, jumping back like he’s been electrocuted. His elbow bangs against the fridge and he grips it, swearing. “Ever heard of knocking, asshole?”  
  
Sam relaxes and tucks his gun into his waistband as he takes in the little scene. The old-timey light casts a buttery halo over the table, and the matching salt and pepper shakers, and Dean and Cas with their touristy pajama bottoms (bought at a hardware store by Dean, naturally; covered in gators and pelicans, respectively). It’d be achingly domestic if there wasn’t a _Thing_ with a capital T haunting the front yard. At least they're both safe. Sam offers a half-hearted smile. “Sorry. Just trying to be sure.”  
  
“Be sure of what? That I shit myself?” Dean rubs his arm peevishly and sits at the little kitchen table where Cas is waiting behind the stand of empty beer bottles. “Glad to have you back, you sociopath. Really. I think I fractured my funny bone."  
  
"That's a nerve."  
  
"You're a...nerve. Shut up," Dean grunts. "It hurts."  
  
“Here.” Before anybody can say anything like _hey, idiot, you’re low on grace,_ Cas is touching Dean’s arm. There’s a faint glow as he grunts, either from weakness or exasperation or a combination of the two, and he squints accusingly at the elder. “You’re overreacting.”  
  
_Waste of grace,_ Sam thinks, getting himself a bottle of water, but he limits himself to telling his brother “Nice going, asshole.” Dean is too flustered to object. “What are you two doing?”  
  
“Midnight snack,” Dean says at the same time Cas says “Discussing the case.”  
  
Sam chooses, kindly, to ignore the total lack of snacks present as well as the heated look they exchange as he joins them at the table. They must be having a _Talk_ with a capital T. Sam just hopes it isn't about him.  
  
“Sure. Great. Did you guys notice anybody hanging around here tonight?”  
  
Dean groans loudly. “It’s nothing, man. Heard something out there a while ago and Cas says he saw something through the window, but there wasn’t anything there when we checked it out. I'm telling you, it's a vamp, and it's in hiding after the last kill. It'll be back, but we'll know when it's here. Judging from the state of those kids, our guy likes a fight."  
  
“I did see something,” Cas insists. “It was a dog, specifically a bluetick coonhound, I think. Like the, uh, the Huckleberry Hound.” He glances between them expectantly.  
  
“The what?” Dean asks, feigning ignorance even as his face lights up. Sam hates that his immediate reaction is to tease Castiel’s naivety, but also—also, the grave expression Cas adopts when he believes he has to explain pop culture to them is pretty funny, so Sam keeps quiet.  
  
“Huckleberry Hound. The titular animated character from _The Huckleberry Hound Show_ in the early 60’s,” Cas says patiently. As if Dean hasn't already experienced the entirety of human media via shitty off-color motel televisions.  
  
Dean nods like it’s new information. “Oh, I see. A cartoon dog, eh? Is he, like, famous? For anything special?” He shrugs nonchalantly, but Sam knows exactly what he’s angling for. He snorts into his drink.  
  
Castiel frowns. “I’m surprised you don’t know this, Dean. I thought you enjoyed animated classics.”  
  
Sam nearly bumbles that one--chokes on his water, actually. He knows too damn well what kind of animated classics Dean enjoys, and he’s pretty sure they’re not what Cas is thinking of.  
  
“Well.” Dean shoots an evil look at Sam, who splutters for air. “Not familiar with this one. Continue?”  
  
Cas temples his hands, an awkward little professor in printed pajamas. “Well, the Huckleberry Hound was an anthropomorphic coonhound who most notably sang an inaccurate rendition of "Oh, My Darling Clementine." Interesting, actually, that the song is attributed to Percy Montrose, but the English lyrics are set to the tune of an old Spanish love ballad, which I think legally counts as theft of intellectual property, but the actual origin of the track remains mysterious, and it was several generations ago, so a lawsuit would be difficult to pursue. Of course, Montrose’s lyrics were also based off an earlier song which was primarily featured in, uh, some morally-indigestible minstrel shows—”  
  
Enough is enough, Sam decides. Cas will ramble on all night if somebody doesn’t stop him, and Dean definitely isn’t going to as long as he thinks there’s a shot at getting the angel to spit a bar of “Darling Clementine.”  
  
Sam clears his throat to interrupt and says, “I think Dean just wants you to sing the song, man.”  
  
Castiel stares at Sam before turning his head to Dean, who is also staring at Sam. “Dude,” Dean groans. “C'mon. I almost had him. Not cool.”  
  
“It is you who is not cool,” Castiel retorts, and then, petulantly, he adds, “I did see a dog, and it was a bluetick coonhound.” He leans back and crosses his arms, a silent _That’s that_.  
  
“Yeah. We’re being hunted by a cartoon dog,” Dean informs Sam, whimsy plastered all over his eyebrows.  
  
“No, that was just an example for your benefit. The animal I saw was real and very large. Not cartoonish in the slightest.”  
  
“Maybe we’re looking for a hellhound,” Sam offers. Dean is quick to remind him that those are invisible, and he’s pretty sure Cas is just digging his heels in.  
  
And then—maybe it’s all the canid puns—something jogs Sam’s memory. He blinks back against a headache that wells in his temples. “Guys. I—I think—I think Boyd mentioned something about the family that rented this place before the last victims. What did they—they saw something. It was something weird.”  
  
Dean clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Good. Weird’s our thing.”  
  
Sam scrubs a hand over his eyes like that’ll kickstart his brain. It feels like trying to use a laggy computer. “It was a dog, I think. Or something that looked like a dog, or somebody wearing a dog mask—”  
  
“It’s a normal dog, then.” Dean shrugs. “I haven’t seen anything to suggest otherwise.”  
  
“Ghost dog?” Castiel asks, squinting.  
  
Dean snorts. “Nah. Black dog, maybe. Those aren’t invisible, but if the family saw one, they'd be--"  
  
"Kaput," Cas finishes wisely.  
  
“Except they’re not dead,” Sam says. “But—”  
  
“Normal dog,” Dean says, and it’s clear the issue is resolved in his mind. “Like I said. This isn't a werewolf or a ghost tour or a--a trickster, or archangel, or whatever. We've got our guy already, I'm telling you. It's the landlord. It's always the fuckin' landlord."  
  
“Couldn’t it be—” Cas begins, but Dean interrupts with a wave of his hand. The look on his face suggests the debate is over.  
  
“That's enough for tonight. We're getting nowhere. Let's just drink."  
  
“We’ve been having drinks," Cas grouses.  
  
“And we deserve a few more. We've been working our tails off for weeks, okay? You especially, Sammy. Have a beer.”  
  
Sam’s head is already swimming. He can’t imagine adding alcohol to that. “I’m good."  
  
“Party pooper. Alright.” Dean clears his throat and raises his bottle. “Uh, so here's to working our tails off, and to catching this vampire, and to a gumbo-filled vacation. And to Benny, yeah?”  
  
“Yes,” Cas agrees reluctantly, raising an empty bottle and returning Sam’s long-suffering look with the silent promise that they’ll both push this Huckleberry thing. “To Benny.”  
  
Their glasses _clink_.


	4. the happier times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's only short but it is a flashback because I love angry young Stanford Sam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of implied homophobia.

New York, 2000-ish. A moldy motel with two beds and a couch that wasn't actually a pull-out (that Dean claimed by virtue of being shit at rock-paper-scissors).  
  
The whole place smelled kind of like feet.  
  
“You gonna tell Dad?” Dean asked.  
  
“Tell him what? I’m quitting?” Sam snorted, threw the letter back into his duffel. The envelope poked out cheerfully, a traitorous slip of white. “Yeah, that’ll go over well.”  
  
Dean was brushing his teeth in the doorway, a blood-spotted towel around his neck and corresponding bandages on his shoulder and back. He’d sucked face with the wrong person, apparently. After arriving back at the motel in a sweaty panting mess, Dean had self-consciously explained that it’s hard to tell vampires from humans when it’s dark inside the club and you’re not sober (as long as John was listening, it had just been a good honest beer-drunk). He came in with dried blood soaking the collar of his jacket and told them it was taken care of, insisted it was a loner and that he’d already disposed of the body in some woods an hour outside of the city. Sam was inclined to believe him, but John had said some bullshit about double-checking and took off again in the Impala, leaving them alone in the motel. It barely even seemed to faze Dean, the lack of respect and trust their father had for him.  
  
Then Dean had seen Sam looking at the envelope again. The one with STANFORD printed on it in big letters. He’d picked it up at Bobby’s last time they’d visited and it’d taken him a week and a half to gather the courage to open it.  
  
It was an acceptance.  
  
When Sam told him, Dean had been so pissed, so betrayed, that he’d left the room with only a brief look of disgust. But the next day he was all congratulatory winks and smiles when John wasn’t paying attention. Dean had come to terms with it and he figured John would too, because Dean was blind to John’s actual personality.  
  
You know, shitty.  
  
“You should tell him,” Dean said around a mouthful of foam. “You never know.”  
  
“Yeah, Dean, except I do know. He’ll kill me.”  
  
“No, he won’t. Maybe he’ll be a little angry that you’ve been keeping it secret--” Sam glared at him and Dean shrugged, ducking back into the bathroom to spit and rinse. “Hell, Sammy, I bet he’d even be proud if you gave him the chance. This is a big deal.”  
  
“Just Sam is fine,” Sam grumbled, staring moodily at his duffel. Dean laughed.  
  
Sam had cuts and welts on his hands and he didn't even know where they came from. They stung like hell whenever they salted anything, though. It barely did any good to treat them because there'd just be more the next day. He kept picking at scabs without realizing. He was pretty sure he was developing a tic.  
  
Funny thing was, Sam could barely remember having clean hands, ever. There always seemed to be cuts or callouses or gunpowder under his nails (gunpowder at best). The Stanford envelope was so pristine Sam felt almost guilty handling it, even worse shoving it among his underwear and deodorant.  
  
God, he might even do well at college if he could just get there.  
  
Dean came back into the room with boxers and a _Space Jam_ t-shirt for sleeping. He made a face, scraping his tongue across his teeth. “I swear I brushed for like, ten minutes, and I can still taste goddamn vampire.”  
  
“I still don’t know how you didn’t notice the teeth.” Sam pantomimed fangs, wiggling his fingers in front of his lips until Dean groaned. “I mean, really. That’s next level horniness even for you, Dean.”  
  
“Hey, man, it was--I got caught up in the moment, okay? Struck stupid by the passion between two writhing bodies?” He flopped on the couch accompanied by a cacophony of old springs. Sam served him another dubious look and Dean sighed, as if disappointed. “Of course you wouldn’t know about that. Virgin.”  
  
Sam laughed and picked at a healing cut on his palm. “Sure.”  
  
Dean laid back and closed his eyes, settling into the cushions, speaking through a yawn. “To be fair, I did notice the teeth when she started chomping on me. Serves me right, I guess.”  
  
That was what Sam assumed he said. For some reason, for one moment, it sounded like Dean said _he_ instead of _she_. Which would’ve been, in Dean’s own words, ridiculous. Because Dean would never actually say anything like that...out loud, while sober, at least.  
  
“Better late than never, I guess,” Sam said, gut clenching.  
  
“That’s one way of lookin’ at it,” Dean snorted. He rolled over, face pressed against the cushions, exposing the little maroon splotches spreading through the bandages on his neck.  
  
For a second, a single second, Sam considered parroting Dean's own words back at him. _You never know. He might even be proud if you gave him the chance._  
  
Yeah, fat chance.   
  
“Night,” Dean said, adding under his breath, “bitch.” Even though it was only 9PM and John was still out there somewhere.  
  
Sam looked once again at the envelope in his duffel, looked back at Dean curled up and hanging over the edges of the couch. Thought of him alone with John, and thought about him trying to find happiness or at least distraction in the dark moments between hunting and the interstate. Thought about what John would do if Dean slipped up like that in front of him. What would John do?  
  
Sam stared hard at the envelope, furled like a dove in a black nest, and he thought about California and all that waited for him there.  
  
You never knew.


	5. on blue bayou

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> s15 making me say Be The Sam Content You Want To See In The World.  
> Some warnings at the end of the chapter.

Three. Fucking. Days.  
  
That’s how long they’ve been here. Not a single lead since Ghost Tours—just a lot of wasted time and lost sleep at the library, poring over yellowed pages containing fragments of local lore.  
  
For Sam, at least. Dean’s been off doing his own thing with Cas in tow. They basically only see each other at night and when they chance on each other in town. It’s painfully obvious to everybody but Dean that he’s practicing some serious avoidance on this whole case. Sam's taking a break and going on a beer run because Dean just texted "got something" -- even though he texted the same thing yesterday about an energy drink he'd been wanting to try.  
  
The Impala squeals up, Zeppelin bleeding from the open windows, just as Sam emerges from the convenience store. Dean sticks his head out and raps his knuckles on the door in time. “Hop in, loser. We’re going to kill a werewolf.”  
  
Sam glances quickly around to make sure nobody heard that, although he isn’t certain which part he’s more nervous about somebody hearing. “Your references are going downhill,” Sam mutters, eyeing Castiel’s shotgun position.  
  
“Just get in the back, Sammy. We don’t have all day.” The angel just offers an apologetic face, looking as nonplussed as Sam feels. Reluctantly, he slides into the backseat, stowing the grocery bags (paper not plastic) which are filled with beer, bacon, Slim Jims, Skittles, bottled water, canned soup, painkillers, and more frozen lasagna. This all spills across the floor as Dean races out into the street, manically energized as “Dazed and Confused” starts up on his eight-track. He whoops as they drive past the NOW EXITING HOUSSAYE sign.  
  
“Where’re we going?”  
  
“Forest north of here. Hiker just stumbled into the police department sayin’ his girlfriend's been taken by a crazy naked guy.”  
  
“So...?”  
  
“So I think we’re on the hunt for a naked guy,” Dean says, frowning as he reconsiders that statement. He shakes his head and barrels onward. “Maybe you were right. Cas seein’ a dog is one thing, but we finally got Boyd to give us the number of the family before the last victims. They confirmed they saw a dog-like face outside the same window. The dad was real shook up about it, kept mentioning that it moved unnatural. Now this dude comes in saying his girl’s been kidnapped by a streaker with a creepy wolf mask?” Dean shrugs brusquely, but Sam can tell he really is regretful. “Sorry, Cas. Shoulda listened to ya.”  
  
“That would be a first,” Castiel replies dryly. Sam laughs out loud at that.  
  
“Shut up,” Dean grumbles, good-naturedly. He’s always in a good mood during werewolf hunts. Or maybe he’s just happy because this means they can leave.  
They park in a gravel lot half and hour away and enter where the hiking signs greet tourists, but from there Dean pushes them off the trail and into the brush. It's the height of mosquito season.  
  
Itchy and irate, they wander all over the forest and don’t find a damn thing aside from trees and muck and strange birds. That is, they don’t find a damn thing until an hour after dusk, when all the plants are lit a weird aquamarine that play tricks on Sam’s eyes. It’s either that or the lack of sleep that makes Sam’s hand shake and spill water over his boots when he takes a drink because his head is aching like a son of a bitch -- but that’s a problem for later, because Dean is yelling.  
  
“Found something!” he calls somewhere ahead. He’s squinting at a tree, brow furrowed like he’s trying to read Greek. “Look at this.” He gestures Sam closer, brows knitting. “Some kinda spell?”

>   
>  HUBRIS  
>  HAMARTIA  
>  NEMESIS  
> 

Huh. It _is_ Greek.

Castiel snaps a pic for later Googling, very nearly blinding them all with the flash as he accidentally engages selfie mode, while Sam, resident lore jockey, wracks his brain on the meaning. It’s vaguely familiar.

“Not a spell, I don’t think. Not one I’ve ever seen. I know Nemesis is the Greek goddess of revenge, but I don’t—invoking ancient Greek vengeance goddesses doesn’t exactly fit the werewolf M.O., does it?”

“Werewolf with a grudge?” Dean shrugs. “It’s happened before. Douchebag turns and rips apart some poor girl who had the balls to throw a drink in his face. Maybe he was a Lit major.”

Sam ignores the Madison of it all. “Okay, but why take the time to write about a murder while he’s committing it?”

Dean presses his spine against a tree, rubbing his back on it like a bear. He yawns, because it’s a murder investigation and of course he does. “Got me. Naked werewolf is where I stopped paying attention.”

“Maybe it has a grudge against you two,” Castiel says.

“It’s not like we keep a low profile. We’ve made enemies,” Dean agrees.

“Yeah, but most of them are dead,” Sam argues.

“Sam.” Cas makes pointed eye contact, placing a hand on Dean’s shoulder to cease his movement. His posture has gone stiff -- well, stiffer than usual. He’s about as subtle as a tank at a car show in trying to secretly signal something is wrong. “We might have to _consider_ the _possibility_ of a _trap_ ,” he says slowly, eyes widening for extra emphasis. Sam immediately tenses, trusting Castiel’s calm demeanor that they’re not in enough danger that he has to reach for his gun just yet.

Naturally, Dean doesn’t pick up on a thing; he’s staring with raised eyebrows at the hand on his shoulder until it finally falls away. “What makes you say that?”

Cas carefully tilts his head at a point somewhere past Sam’s head. “That’s not a werewolf,” he mutters, and Dean finally gets it. His flashlight beam flicks sideways with his eyes and, whatever he sees, it puts a knot in his jaw.

“Jesus,” he mutters, mouth barely moving.

“What is it?” Sam breathes, trying very hard to keep himself steady.

“Uh...TBD,” Dean says. He gnaws nervously on his lower lip, one hand reached out not quite to grab Sam’s elbow. The tension in the air ratchets up a few notches. “Whatever it is, it definitely ain’t human, and it’s no fucking wolf. Take a look, Sammy.”

He almost doesn’t want to. He’s almost afraid.

Sam turns to look at the creature standing less than hundred yards away in the treeline. It stands like a man, and it looks like a wolf, but it is decidedly not either. Even from this distance Sam can see the word carved into its heaving chest.

“Anagnorisis,” Sam reads, and then he realizes, and laughs weakly at the irony, the actual irony of it. “Tragedy.”

For an absurd moment, Sam feels like he really is in an episode of _Scooby Doo_. The monster is man-shaped (and yes, naked) up until its neck. From that point up, Sam’s brain is trying to tell his eyes that they’re looking at a mask of some sort, like if he gripped at the base and pulled, it would slide off as rubber and faux fur. But the snout is matted with blood, and the teeth are too sharp to be plastic, and the rolling eyes sure as shit aren’t glass. They glitter, inhuman and malignant and filled with the kind of stupid evil that Sam has seen a thousand times. The man, if it ever was a man to begin with, is wiry and streaked with dirt and gore. Its dog-head jerks around and Sam sees its hands—human—are painted to the wrist with blood. It stalks forward with a hair-raisingly human gait.  
  
“Huckleberry Hound, my ass,” Dean mutters to Cas.  
  
“It’s attacked someone recently.” Sam retrieves, cocks, and aims his gun in one motion. Unless they want to get real friendly, silver bullets are as close as they’re getting to a cure right now. There’s no way of knowing if they’ll work on whatever the hell that thing is, but Sam only plans on going in with his silver knife as a last resort. He doesn’t want to end up like whoever’s staining Huckleberry’s fingers. “There may be a victim nearby.”  
  
“On it,” Castiel grunts, bolting around the creature and into the path of slashed and broken brush it emerged from.  
  
Dean swears and follows, covering Cas with a single shot directly into the thing’s grisly head. “Stay in your lane, Old Blue!”  
  
The bullet gets its attention, but nothing else, so silver is right out the window. Huckleberry snaps back quick, frothing pink at the gums and bleeding from the forehead. It whines gutturally, like laughter. Now _it_ knows they’re fucked, too.  
  
“Sonofabitch missed his last rabies shot,” Dean snarks. Sam doesn’t have time to give him a look because he’s busy closing the two-man circle they’ve got going on. He and Dean, on opposite sides, draw closer in a slow spiral. They both stow their guns.  
  
Looks like last resort time already.  
  
“Easy,” Sam breathes, and unsheathes the silver dagger that’s usually reserved for djinn. Dean draws his angel blade. Despite his grim expression, which is frankly appropriate for the situation, he still can’t help taunting.  
  
“Heard you been a bad boy.”  
  
“Don’t mock it, Dean. You're making it worse."  
  
Dean ignores him. In his head, he’s the star of an action movie, and this is the climactic fight scene, so he’s pulling out all his dog-related one liners. He circles closer, low to the ground like he’s training raptors. “You ever read _Old Yeller_? Because I’ve only seen the last five minutes of the movie, and that’s what I’m pullin' from."  
  
The dog snarls through the blood on its lips.  
  
“Dean!” Sam says through gritted teeth, because now images of another bloody dog are crashing through his head, and it’s several years too late for him to be thinking about this for the first time, but he’s thinking:  
  
_What the hell happened to the dog? Did Amelia and Don look after Riot, after he left? Did they have to put him down?_ It’s been years (if not decades, emotionally speaking) but he’s struck with a solid pang of regret and despair and confusion like he hasn’t felt since the moments after he killed Lilith. He’s managed to abandon everyone and everything he’s ever loved at exactly the time they needed him most. _He should be there. He should have been there for Amelia. He should have been there for Dean. He should have been there for his dog,_ Sam thinks, and then he realizes that maybe he’s not in his right mind.  
  
“Sam!” Dean yells, and Sam realizes he’s forgotten entirely where he is and what he’s in the middle of doing and it’s going very badly indeed. Dean is on the ground, and his blade is on the ground, and his hands are outstretched in defense. The creature is ripping into him with its very real, very sharp teeth. “Sam!” Dean screams, and then screams again without words, and his voice cracks along with something in his arm as the real teeth sink home.  
  
It’s a mad scramble to the middle of the clearing where blood falls like a Pollock painting. The moon has disappeared behind a cloud, Sam observes, and then he collides thoughtlessly with the monster.  
  
They’re rolling and sliding and tumbling down a small hill until he finds himself half-submerged on his back in the muck with the thing crouched on his chest in a way that’s not really human _or_ doglike. Sam, whose head and heart both ache beyond words, barely deflects its jaws as they snap for his throat.  
  
It really is like _Scooby Doo,_ but the mask won’t come off. The fur is thick, gritty, and stinks like an outhouse, and now Sam’s hands are full of it as he struggles under this writhing sinuous barking weight. There’s a silver blade sticking out of it somewhere that doesn’t seem to be doing anything. He is dimly aware that, with the beast’s flopping ears and loose jowls, this fight looks ridiculous. Cartoonish, sure, but not PG. It certainly doesn’t feel PG when the bloodslick snout buries itself in the knot of his shoulder. It isn’t ridiculous when he can’t help the scream that tears itself through his clenched teeth.  
  
“Sam!” a hoarse voice cries. Cas, carrying someone. Cas, saving his ass, and Sam would pray if he could comprehend it through the pain. He hears the cocking of a shotgun, the .16 gauge that he doesn’t remember Dean throwing in the angel’s hands before they headed in. The world explodes in a blast of heat and Sam feels warm and wet splatter across his neck as an artery bursts. The beast howls, but Cas is packing silver bullets, and this thing is no werewolf. It’s just pissed.  
  
At some point, equidistant from the sound of the gun going off and the realization that he could possibly be dying, Sam discovers the weight on his chest is gone. It’s nice. It would be nicer, he thinks, if he weren’t possibly dying.  
  
In the near distance, something is screaming.  
  
A handful of stones are sent skittering down the small hill, coming to rest against his boots as somebody crashes down the slope. There’s clammy, bloody hands patting his face frantically. “C’mon, Sammy. Wake up, Sammy.”  
  
His eyes roll open and he forgets why they closed in the first place. He’s sleepy, exhausted, probably losing a lot of blood. There’s Dean’s face hovering over him, swimming palely under the moonlight and the aquatic glow of the plants. “‘M’okay,” Sam gasps, even though his chest is made of broken glass, even though his shoulder is filled with hot throbbing lead. When he coughs he tastes blood and he’s not sure whose it is (but he has a sinking hunch).  
  
“There you are. There we go,” Dean coos, adjusting his collar. “Let’s get you on your feet, okay?”  
  
“Go help Cas,” Sam gasps, and it seems like every breath is a gasp or a pant or a bolt of pain. Sam hopes he hasn’t broken a rib. That especially sucks.  
  
“He’s—” Dean’s head jerks up, gaze aimed somewhere out of Sam’s field of vision at where a battle is happening. “—handling it. He’s handling it, alright? Let’s worry about you first. On your feet, soldier, come on.” Dean tugs at him uselessly. Sam’s all dead weight, all limp and about to be passing out. The bloodloss is catching up with him. He wants to let Dean know, but all he can do is gasp for air. Finally, like a gut punch, the breath is sucked from his lungs. His vision pinches into a narrow band of drifting moon. The ground opens up and he’s falling.  
  
“Go help,” he gasps, and that’s it.  
  
Lights out.

The lights are out, but she’s awake.  
  
She moves beside him. “Sam,” she says. Her hand is warm against his bare shoulder, delicate fingers tracing little circles against his skin. “Sam,” she repeats, sing-song. He opens his eyes to get a look at the smile he can hear in her voice. She’s illuminated by the moon, like something out of a painting or a dream, and she’s smiling so gently. Her golden hair falls across his face as she bends close. She presses her lips to the corner of her mouth; chaste, with the promise and the memory of more. She tastes familiar, sweet, safe.  
  
“Jess,” Sam breathes, and his hand is curling through the curtain of her hair, brushing it away so he can see that radiant smile. Her eyes crinkle at the edges with laughter lines and it makes his heart ache to see that she’s aged so gracefully. “I miss you,” he confesses blindly.  
  
“I know. I miss you too, Sam.” Her thumb brushes over his cheekbone, soothing. “It’s okay.”  
  
He leans into her touch, tilts his mouth into the heel of her hand. “I had a nightmare. You weren’t there. You were gone,” he breathes. He breathes again sharply. “You burned up, Jess. It was too late. He got you. You burned up. I’m sorry.” He’s babbling. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, but he can’t stop himself. “I’m sorry. I was too late. You burned and I—I couldn’t save you.”  
  
“I know, baby. It’s okay. I’m here now.” She hums tunelessly and traces little circles into his temple. He closes his eyes, noses her palm. She’s right. She’s warm and real and right, she’s righter than anything he’s ever known or will ever know again. “I’m here now, Sam,” Jess promises. “Yours forever.”  
  
“I love you,” he breathes, and she kisses him.  
  
She kisses him and her mouth is cold. Her lips are frostbitten. Her skin is ice water against his skin, she is burning cold against his body. Sam jerks back and watches as something under her face pulsates, red flame like a nightmare shining through the eyes that crinkle at the edges when she smiles. “I’m here, Sam,” Lucifer says in Jessica’s voice. He tangles Jessica’s hand through Sam’s hair and presses Jessica’s teeth to the cartilage of Sam’s ear. “I’m back, baby. I’m all-l-l yours.”  
  
“No,” Sam gasps. He can’t move. He can’t get away, and he’s drowning in the cold. His mind goes white.  
  
He wakes up spluttering around a mouthful of blood where he’s bitten his tongue. There’s dirt on his face.  
  
“Sam,” Cas says softly, and withdraws his palm from Sam’s forehead. He’s kneeling, and his face is partially illuminated by the flashlight from his phone. He looks relieved. “Sorry for the abruptness.”  
  
Somewhere out of his range of sight, Dean’s voice rings out. “Cas? You got him?”  
  
“Yes. He’s okay.”  
  
Little by little, Sam comes back to reality—or a forest in Louisiana, which is close enough. If possible, the dark is darker and his headache is less ache and more head. The moon is gone for good behind a cloud.  
  
Castiel carefully helps Sam sit up. There’s a ripped piece of cloth bound messily around his shoulder that the angel clumsily tightens as blood starts to seep through. He’s got dried mud all over one side of his face like he took a header and hasn’t had time to clean himself up yet. His tired eyes are flushed with relief. “You’re okay, for the most part. I healed you the best I could,” he says when Sam winces. “The monster got away.”  
  
“How long was I out?” Sam utters. His voice is cracked, so he guesses long enough. Cas ignores him, anyway, and the flashlight goes off. Darkness again.  
  
“You were right. There was a victim nearby, another tourist. I healed her, for the most part.” There’s a tone of regret in his voice that Sam only senses when he averts his eyes. Not regret—guilt. Suspicion flares in Sam’s chest like the broken rib he’d had ten (twenty? thirty?) minutes ago. _For the most part,_ Castiel keeps saying. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, and Sam has a feeling he knows exactly what that means.  
  
He tries to get to his feet, but his vision wobbles, so he stays put for the time being. “You healed her? Not all the way?”  
  
“She’s fine.”  
  
“What about—Is Dean okay? Did you heal his arm?”  
  
“Dean is fine. Calm down.” Non-committal answers usually mean Cas is hiding something. He knows he’s not good enough at lying to try anything more than avoidance.  
  
Sam prepares himself to get angry. “Cas, tell me you didn’t choose me over them.”  
  
Cas opens and shuts his mouth, assessing Sam’s expression (angry). Stonily, he replies, “You had a concussion.” Which means he doesn’t anymore, which means somehow, Sam got priority over his brother and over an actual victim. He exhales and clenches his fist just to see how much his wound still hurts. It hurts, but not as bad as it should.  
  
If Cas has to divide his healing and still can’t even fully heal a fucked-up shoulder, Sam figures he must be pretty low on grace. Lower than he’s letting on, even.  
  
_Doesn’t matter,_ Sam reminds himself. That doesn’t mean he gets to decide Sam’s life is more important than anybody else’s.  
  
“Did Dean tell you to do that?”  
  
“No,” Cas says sharply, then presses his lips together. “Yes. But I was going to anyway, Sam. He was right. You wouldn’t have been able to function like that.”  
  
Castiel stands. He has a wince of his own as he straightens his knee; Sam notes a flannel bandage that matches the one around his chest. Part of his own shirt, he thinks, and confirms this when he realizes both his sleeves are gone. Dean is an asshole even when he’s saving people.  
  
“Dean says he’s had worse,” Cas continues, “and I’m inclined to believe him. The girl just has a broken leg. She can heal the rest of the way on her own. You were the most badly hurt.”  
  
Sam grits his teeth and staggers to his feet and pretends, just for a second, just to make himself feel better, that he has the moral authority to be pissed. “ _I_ can heal on my own, Cas. Believe me, I’m used to it. You should’ve taken care of her all the way first. Or at least taken care of yourself.” He gestures at the crappy patch job.  
  
Castiel huffs and places a steadying hand on his shoulder. Sam realizes he’s swaying, which isn’t helping his case. “Sam, listen to me. We don’t have the time to wait on my grace to recharge. We need you now. Unless we’re able to kill this thing— _together_ —somebody else will be injured in a way that is beyond my abilities to heal. I’ve done all I could for her and for you. I’m working with what I’ve got.”  
  
God, Cas gets straight to the point. Sam grudgingly accepts that he even makes a good point, even though he’s willing to bet it’s ripped straight from one of Dean’s pepless peptalks. He looks around, prepared to take this out on his brother instead. “Where is Dean, anyway?”  
  
Cas drops his gaze gratefully (he doesn’t like arguing). “Dean is helping the girl. He’s going to take her to the hospital. You might want to go with them.”  
  
“No. I’m fine, Cas, really.” That might be an exaggeration, but at least he can think clearly. He doesn’t know what happened to him back there, and he doesn’t want to know, as long as it’s over. Cas is right. Sam can’t stay mad at the guy when he’s basically giving up his own life force to heal them. He grimaces in an attempt at an apologetic smile. “Sorry. Sorry for snapping at you, Cas, it’s just—the job. You did good, alright? I’m good.”  
  
Dean checks up on him (“Alright, Sammy? It’s just a flesh wound. Don’t be such a baby.”) before leaving for the hospital with the wide-eyed girl who can’t seem to understand how she got to this forest in the first place. When he returns, they spend the rest of the night stumbling through the foliage and the dark, half-heartedly looking for their monster. By the time they crawl back out of the forest, it’s late morning, and the damp heat is back with a vengeance. They crawl out of the jungle and Sam dreams of going home and sleeping for eight hours straight.  
  
As Steven fucking Tyler says, dream on.  
  
“With our luck, that’s a harpy.”  
  
Sam follows Dean’s squint upward, eyes almost closed against the sheer sunlight glaring down at them. A large bird circles above them, probably a half mile up, turning on a dime as it spirals ever closer toward the earth. It’s a turkey vulture; he can tell by the bald head and the monstrous dark wings that curl upward at the tips.  
  
“It’s a vulture. Bad omen.”  
  
Dean grunts, cradling his arm close to his chest. He’s been refusing Castiel’s help, insisting he finish healing Sam first, which doesn’t actually work if Sam refuses, too. The blood is soaking through his jacket in sloppy pinpricks. “Do we ever get any other kind of omen?”  
  
“Vultures are natural scavengers. Commonly, they’ve been used to represent purity.” Cas grimaces and leans against the car. The blood is soaking through his jeans in ominous shapes. He looks unhappy, but Sam can’t tell if it’s because he hurts or because nobody will let him help even though he says his grace has mostly recovered. “Of course, this is real life, and such symbols are, for the most part, meaningless. For example, despite human mythology concerning canines, the dog-headed monster has only displayed loyalty to violence against commercial tourism.”  
  
“If he wasn’t attacking college kids I’d cheer him on,” Dean quips. “Dad always said tourists were a plague. Like locusts without the decency to bury themselves.”  
  
Maybe it’s just the blood loss, but Sam has an epiphany. He stops, halfway folded into the car. “Wait a minute, Cas, you’re a genius.”  
  
Castiel looks suspicious, like Sam’s trying to set him up for a joke—maybe he’s been spending too much time around Dean. “I am?”  
  
Sam shoves his muddy, bloody, tangled hair away from his face, inexplicably energized. “This thing is only attacking tourists, right?”  
  
“So? Tons of monsters do that. Outsiders aren’t missed,” Dean rolls his shoulder back with a wince. “Monster 101, Sammy.”  
  
“It just started a few weeks ago, though, remember? Remember what else happened in this town a few weeks ago? Something the locals don’t like?”  
  
Sam can see it dawn on Dean’s face. “The tourist trap.”  
  
“The Ghost Tours. This place was built in November.” He can’t believe he didn’t get it before. The Greek shit, the wolfish-not-werewolf signs, the constant headaches. The lack of any other explanation.  
  
Dean is trying to keep up. “So somebody doesn’t like the attention it’s drawing here. Why? A nest?”  
  
“Maybe it’s a territorial thing,” Cas suggests. “Somebody may have claimed a stake on this land.”  
  
That's close. If Sam's right, that's really close. He rests a hand on the Impala, glancing back up at the vulture. For the first time this week he feels energized.  
  
"What do you think, Sam? Are we trespassing?"  
  
“I think something really fucked up is happening in this town," Sam exhales, and slides into the car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> implied samifer (not r rated but also not consensual)  
> slight gore


End file.
